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tv   Morning Joe  MSNBC  February 4, 2013 3:00am-6:00am PST

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to compete on the global stage. what we need are people prepared for the careers of our new economy. by 2025 we could have 20 million jobs without enough college graduates to fill them. that's why at devry university, we're teaming up with companies like cisco to help make sure everyone is ready o with the know-how we need for a new tomorrow. [ male announcer ] make sure america's ready. make sure you're ready. at devry.edu/knowhow. ♪ but, dad, you've got... [ voice of dennis ] allstate. with accident forgiveness,
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they guarantee your rates won't go up just because of an accident. smart kid. [ voice of dennis ] indeed. are you in good hands? has oats that can help lower cholesterol? and it tastes good? sure does! wow. it's the honey, it makes it taste so... well, would you look at the time... what's the rush? be happy. be healthy. at the top of the show, we asked you the nonmusical question, why are you awake? i've got one right here somebody tweeted in. lori, very close watcher of the cut-aways on the program, she
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tweets,@steverattner working diligently on his charts. unfortunate i have to miss it, spin class trumps stats. steve rattner and his sexiness coming up shortly on "morning joe," starts right now. ♪ lights out half the power in new orleans stadium, the superdome here, is out. in almost a perfect semicircle of the lights, half the stadium stayed light, half of it went out. the scoreboard is also not working as well. one big click of the light switch, and we lost power in half of the stadium. >> good morning, everyone. welcome to "morning joe." it is monday, time to wake up bright and early. february 4th. all right. we've got a shot here in the
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studio of, what, is halperin walking in here? with us -- this is amazing. look at this, the "game change" boys. >> they're back and better than ever. >> we also have the sexy statistician -- >> according to twitter. >> yes. former treasury official and "morning joe" economic analyst, steve rattner. national affairs editor for "new york" magazine and political analyst, john heilemann and senior political analyst, mark halperin. >> what a game. mika, you had to, like -- you had to stay on every play eating your fried hot dogs. >> no. >> she was there. she was there, beginning to end. >> no. >> is it true when you watch a game, you score it at home? >> no. i was at a cafe in lower manhattan, actually. i did see beyonce. >> yeah. >> yeah? and? >> she was hot. that was good. >> really? >> yeah, i thought so. >> wow. >> what did you guys think? apparently she did not lip-sync. >> no, i would prefer jennifer
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hudson and the sandy hook choir. >> that was amazing. i did see that. >> so moving. that was fantastic. and the game was pretty good, too. >> we've had some good super bowls of late. >> interesting game, though. it went one way, it went the other way. >> with 34 minutes. >> with 34 minutes in between. >> 34 minutes in the middle. >> so did anybody here pick the 49ers? i think we all picked the ravens last week. >> i did. >> you picked the 49ers? >> i did, didn't i? >> i don't know. >> i think i did. >> nate silver picked the 49ers. >> oh. >> did he really? i tell you what, nate is great when it comes to politics. he's had a rough run of it in football. >> let's get to politics. >> it was a great game, though. great country. you think about our childhoods, right? what could you count on? the super bowl would be a terrible game. >> i know. >> and we've had a real run, the last four or five super bowls have been great games. the super bowl is suddenly a good sporting event.
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>> i know. >> to politics, president obama takes his push for new gun-control measures on the road to minneapolis today where he'll share ideas with law enforcement leaders on how to curb gun violence. this as nra's chief executive, wayne lapierre, continued his spirited defense of gun rights this weekend. speaking with fox news's chris wallace about that controversial nra ad that brought the president's children into the gun debate. >> the president's kids are safe, and we're all thankful for it. >> they also face a threat that most children do not face. >> tell that to the people of newtown. tell that -- >> you really think that the president's children are the same kind of target as every schoolchild in america? that's ridiculous and you know it, sir. >> you know, unfortunately, i think there are parents all over the school that -- all over the country that think their kids are entitled to the same amount of protection when they go to school. >> so they should have secret service? >> no, but what they should have
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is police officers or certified armed security in those schools to keep people safe. >> you talk -- one of the points of that ad that i want to ask you about is you made it a class argument. the rich, the elite. >> sure. >> they have bodyguards. they have security. >> sure. and mayor bloomberg has it. mayor bloomberg has bodyguards. >> i'll tell you somebody else who has security, you do. >> sometimes. there's -- yeah. >> on capitol hill, you had security. today you have security. >> yeah, you talk about hypocrisy right out in the open, we've had all kinds of threats. >> does that make you an out of touch elite because you have security? >> i don't deny anyone security when they need it. it is ridiculous, chris, for all the elites and powerful and privileged, the titans of industry to send their kids to schools where there's armed security, to have access to semiautomatic technology. >> wow! chris wallace, man. good on him. wayne lapierre, doing this class argument, i don't know what's
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wrong with him, and i don't know what's wrong with the overbheming overbhem i overwhelming part of the nra that aren't the survivalist wing of the nra, but this guy goes on capitol hill, mark halperin, and he's talking about the elites have bodyguards and the rich have bodyguards, but we the people, he's got more bodyguards than most anybody else. and this argument, and chris wallace really drilled down hard here, the argument, seriously, that all of our children deserve the same amount of protection as the president of the united states children? that's the problem with wayne lapierre and the extremist wing of the nra's arguments. they're stupid arguments. they've got to say oh, and while a mother's clutching her bushmaster with crying children -- they're stupid arguments! there's no logic. >> it's something sarah palin would say. >> they rule by fear. they rule their people by fear, and he's called out here with
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this just ridiculous argument that he's making. >> chris wallace, my former colleague at abc, outstanding job. what a journalist should do, without fear of favor or ideological point of view, did a great job. if you chart every day in the public relations war between those who want more gun control at the federal level and those who want less, the team that wants more has won almost every news cycle, and that is the seminal moment because chris wallace pressed him, and it showed that a lot of the arguments wayne lapierre is making are not on point. they don't go to the question of what kind of policy we need. >> you see him stumbling around, because there's no defense of it. >> chris did a good job. >> chris did a great job. >> today the president on the road continuing to push. they still have momentum on their side and the nra hasn't figured out how to defuse it yet. >> and there's more. >> wait a second. i want to ask you something. you are correct, and it's not just because the mainstream media is, for the most part, i believe liberal. i think wayne lapierre and the
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extremist wing of the nra, i think they've figuratively shot themselves in the foot time and time again. can i ask you this, though? should we have any more pictures of the united states with a gun in his hand? >> not with a little skimpy one like that, no. it's just all wrong. >> it didn't look right. >> it doesn't work. you know what? it's a small issue in the big debate, but yeah, i just kind of cringe. come on, people. >> my mind went back to a bowling alley in pennsylvania. i just don't know. >> just stop. just stop. it doesn't matter. stop. it doesn't matter. >> it doesn't matter. >> but -- but come on. why -- how -- when was that released? >> saturday. yeah. >> it was released saturday, but the picture was taken in august. >> i know that. >> it wasn't posed for this. >> they didn't just throw a gun in his hands. >> i should take him hunting. >> i think he'd enjoy that. >> i think he would. >> that's what the president
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likes to do on his birthday. it was his birthday. >> well, that's fine. >> i know. >> if he did it back in august and it wasn't like -- >> now they want to know how many times he did it. >> come on. it doesn't really matter. again, he doesn't have to do it at all. >> exactly. the argument is strong. the argument is, you know, about the future of our country and what we want our society to be. >> yeah. >> and that was a bad call. one proposal high on the president's wish list, universal background checks for every gun buyer, even at gun shows. that was the topic of a super bowl ad last night that aired in the washington, d.c., market. the spot was purchased about i mayors against illegal guns led by new york city mayor michael bloomberg. ♪ >> the nra once supported background checks. >> we think it's reasonable to provide mandatory instant criminal background checks for
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every sale at every gun show. no loopholes anywhere for anyone. >> america can do this for us. please. >> wait, wait. i'm confused. i'm confused. >> well, lapierre actually argued for -- >> no, it's lapierre. >> lapierre, sorry. >> it means the pierre. >> he argued for mandatory -- >> so that's great. so that's great. let's check that one off the list, right? >> no, no, because yesterday he changed his mind. take a look. >> what? i'm confuse. >> you're for a universal background check? >> well, universal -- now that's what president obama is now putting forward. and let me talk about that. it's a fraud to call it universal. it's never going to be universal. the criminals aren't going to comply with it. they could care less. you're not going to computerize -- you've already seen you're not going to computerize the mental health records. so here's what's going to happen. we ought to quit calling it a
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universal check. the real title ought to be the check on law-abiding people all over this country. >> i'm confused. again -- >> this man's a fool. >> there are a number of good reasons for that. >> the arguments are so ridiculo ridiculous. that's like saying we're not going to have tsa screeners. >> it's also like saying you're not going to have laws against murder. the argument that all laws -- any law that a criminal will violate is a law that you cannot -- should not pass. there's an argument against all laws. because there is no law that there are not some criminals that violate. it's a ridiculous argument. and actually, what you see in that ad which i think is so compelling, you see bayne lapierre not on point on everything. making illogical counterarguments. that ad is precisely on point. you were for it during kl columbine, why not now? >> wayne lapierre's own words,
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no loopholes. we have universal background checks. 91% of americans, republican party in washington, d.c., support this. 91% of americans, and the question is, mika, are they going to continue to be run off the end of the cliff by extremists that make up the hard right of their party that destroys their opportunities to win national elections? this is very simple. by the way, people say oh, joe, he's a -- no, i'm not. i still believe what i've always believed ideologically. i just have always believed in winning. >> yeah. >> maybe it's because i go to university of alabama. we like to win at the university of alabama. we believe in winning. we believe you don't get the ball and run it into the other guy's end zone. you try to win games. this republican party is chasing the most extreme element in their own party through the primary processes, and that's why harry reid right now is running the senate. >> but there are -- i mean, you saw the front page of the business section of "the new
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york times" yesterday. there are people who want these assault weapons, and they're selling off the shelves at twice the price. twice the price. i was online looking at guns. it's unbelievable how they're marketed. people like them. people in america feel they need these multiple -- what's that? >> did you buy one? >> no, i was just trying to understand. i personally don't get it. but there is -- it's not just an extreme fringe tiny bit of society. there are people out there who support this. >> i tell you what. >> in our society. >> there aren't enough of those people out there that feel like they have to have an assault weapon to carry presidential elections or senate elections. >> there's enough to make gun manufacturers a lot of money, to make the gun lobby powerful, to make people like wayne la bpie e pierre -- >> think about the money he makes by ginning up fear in americans and lying to americans, steve rattner, saying if they take your assault weapons and take away those
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magazines that hold 30, then they're going to take away your handguns when he knows that's a lie because scalia and the supreme court in 2008 told all americans you've got a right to keep and bear arms, to protect your families, to have handguns, shotguns, hunting rifles. >> that's obviously the only argument is the scare technique. >> you've got to lie. >> you're going to lose something that you are entitled to. nobody has a use for assault weapons. nobody has a use for 30-bullet magazines. but look, at the end of all this, we said earlier that we -- the people who want universal background checks and want more control is maybe winning in the court of public opinion, but it isn't obvious they're winning on capitol hill where they have to win. i think we're going to get background checks. i think we may get the magazines. the assault weapons does not feel like that's happening. >> it's going to take a long time. the background check is a 50/50 right now. i think it may pass. magazines, not a 50/50 yet. i think it will be in time. assault weapons down the road. it's going to take a while. but you look at these polls, at
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some point even those things become 80/20 issues. but that's not going to happen this year. it might happen next. but we're talking about extremists, right? >> right. >> and trying to go after these extremists that have cost the republicans control of the united states senate. that have kept -- that's kept harry reid in office there. and there seems to be a recognition by some donors that you can't let the most extreme elements run your party. >> so let's see how the gun debate fits into this next story. a group of republican donors is rolling out a new effort to try and fend off tea party challengers who say they're hurting the gop's chances of taking control of the senate. it's called a conservative victory party. and it's backed by karl rove and the super pac american crossroads. their aim, to institutionalize the buckley rule by supporting in primaries the most conservative candidate who can actually win a general election.
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the new effort is meant to be a counterweight to more hard-line conservative groups that have spent big money on primary challengers to their liking. the organization is already eyeing seats being vacated by democratic senator tom harkin of iowa and republican senator saxby chambliss of georgia. i'm just wondering, do you need to -- is the same well where you want to go to renew the republican party? >> you're talking about karl rove? >> i'm talking about karl rove. >> that is, it seems to me, john heilemann, a good question to ask. you go to karl rove, a guy that just got pasted in this last election. i know karl, i like karl. >> part of the past 20 years. >> he got pasted, and also some conservatives brought up, he was part of the bush administration that people like peg -- i'll say it peggy noonan, myself, others think destroyed the conservative movement by spending us into record debt. >> and you're seeing, you know, the immediate reaction among some parts of the conservative movement, parts of the tea
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party, more populist part of the party, attacking the group, saying that he's the karl rove and his allies, they have a bad record to run on and that they're deviating from the principles of true conservatism and they want to back sellouts. i think the main thing you're going to see over the course of this next cycle is a further deepening of the schism between the two kind of pieces of the republican party. the establishment wing and this more populist wing. this is not a bring the party together development. this is a party that's going to drive that wedge even further. >> yeah. >> that's what i'm thinking. >> this is not also -- mark, this isn't really so much about ideolo ideology. >> it's about competence. >> it's about competence. do i sound like michael dukakis? and i'll just say it, cuchinelli. the guy is certifiable when it comes to mainstream thought. he attacks medicaid, medicare, social security. this is a guy that said he was thinking about not giving his
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children social security numbers because that's, quote, how they track you. this is a guy that says things that offend voters. terry mcauliffe, it looks like he's going to walk into this thing because of cuchinelli. and i speak from knowledge because newt gingrich and the republican establishment worked against me because they thought i was too conservative to win my district. how do you sort through it? >> who's the poster child for this? it's congressman akin, todd akin, who lost the seat in missouri. the day akin won the primary, every republican i know in the house said, this guy will never be a senator because he's going to say something stupid. again, not -- >> everybody knew. >> if you take akin's positions and paul ryan's positions on almost every issue, they're indistinguishable. it's about competence and handling yourself to get through a general election. >> let me give you another good example, bob mcdonnell. bob, conservative guy, really
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conservative guy, he went to regent university. they attacked him as a right-wing nut. and you know what bob was for? >> jobs. >> jobs. he ran one of the most competent, great, mainstream conservative -- that's why a lot of the chee-to eaters out there, oh, joe, he hates conservatives -- no, it's not that i hate conservatives. i'm like bobs for jobs. that's how i want every republican candidate to look on the campaign trail. you compare bob to this cuchinelli guy, their views are probably indistinguishable on a lot of things. but bob is competent. he knows how to win. it's like i want a guy that runs a 4.3 40 if he's playing on the university of alabama. i should have the right to say, i'll take the guy who runs a 4.3 40 instead of the guy that smokes and does a 5.5 40. >> you've got this open senate seat in iowa, tom harkin is retiring.
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they look at congressman steve king. if he runs in the primary, he could easily be the nominee. and his record of saying things that gets him in trouble is pretty long. they feel like we're not going to sacrifice that seat to another guy who could lose the general election simply because he can't control his mouth. >> competence also cuts against karl. this argument in this area you're making, it's obviously true. the problem for him is that his record of, quote, of his competence in the last election cycle has taken a bit of a beating. and i think it just puts him -- he's like almost the wrong messenger for the argument within the party because the party -- a lot of people in the party look at him and say, hey. look at your record in 2012. >> by the way, steve, that went all the way through, as we know, infamously, election night. and there's people -- >> the famous election night. >> -- that are very, very close to george w. bush that afterwards said, you know, karl's always had his own set of numbers. and he does this to us in the bush white house, too. are donors, steve, really going to be giving karl rove hundreds
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of millions of dollars again after his performance in 2012? >> well, that's exactly where i was going. if i were a donor to that side of the aisle, i would get back to this competence question. i would say to myself, is this the guy who i want to have take the next few hundred million dollars and try to change the republican party? my own answer would be no, but we'll find out pretty soon whether donors are willing to go one more time with karl or not. >> you know, this country needs a good, strong, vibrant, diverse republican party, and i was reading the article. i'm, like, huh, yeah, good, good. and then it said it was backed by karl rove. and i thought, uh, it's just going to be the same thing all over again. seriously. someone explain to me how this is going to be different. >> you know who would be great for this and i think you guys would agree, haley. not haley in a group of people. haley. put him on this, and let him raise the money. let him pick the numbers. remember, haley is a guy that
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said take jim jeffords because jeffords on his most liberal day was more conservative than the most conservative democrat in vermont. haley understands. haley knows it's about winning. he knows how to win. and by the way, he helped engineer '94 along with newt and some other people. he knows how to elect some pretty conservative guys. >> right. >> despite his record in some races last cycle, karl rove has a pretty long record of winning races, too, and understanding the buckley rule. nominate the most conservative candidate who can win a general election. >> he did it in texas. >> what's that? >> he did it in texas. we've elected a lot of people in texas. >> coming up, david axelrod. also, "time's" rana foroohar and lawrence wright. up next, mike allen with the stories in the "politico playbook." first, bill karins with a check on the forecast. bill? >> good monday morning. over the weekend we saw light
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snow from the great lakes to the northeast. we're doing it again this morning. this is a series of clipper lows, weak winter storms. we'll have about three of them this week. we'll keep our eyes out on friday or possibly a bigger one. in the meantime, one storm is exiting new england. brought us the light snow yesterday. but we do have a good band of snow especially north of chicago. that's the travel trouble spot. going to pick up probably two to four inches there. now it's snowing northern indiana, much of southern michigan, eventually detroit, toledo and areas around cleveland and pittsburgh. that will be more or less late today. and then towards philadelphia and new york city later on this evening, again, one to three inches at most. it's not looking like a blockbuster storm. it's very cold still from the great lakes. northern plains all the way through new england. that won't change this week. so your forecast today, mostly cloudy skies from d.c. to boston. still on the chilly side in most spots. very beautiful weather, though, if you want to look at the rockies, denver continues to be abnormally warm. dallas, a few showers but you're warm, too, along with florida. as we go throughout even
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tuesday, not a lot changes this week. we're still kind of stuck in this weather pattern at least till friday. but good news for everyone that's been really frozen from d.c. to new england, it looks like a big warm-up is coming by the time we get to sunday. most of us should be in the 40s. a shot of times square. this time tomorrow, probably a little bit of light snow. you're watching "morning joe" brewed by starbucks.
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27 past the hour. time now to take a look at the "morning papers." from the parade of papers, "the houston chronicle." former navy s.e.a.l. chris kyle was one of two people murdered at a shooting range on saturday. kyle wrote the best-selling book "american sniper," detailing his service over four combat tours where he killed at least 150 insurgents. police say he was gunned down on saturday by 25-year-old eddie ray ralph, a former iraq war
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veteran who may be suffering from mental illness. and "the kansas city star," a secret legal review concludes president obama has broad powers to prevent a cyber attack against america. the obama administration is said to be many the midst of developing new guidelines for digital warfare including how the military can react with preemptive strikes. "the wall street journal." iran's foreign minister told world leaders yesterday tehran is prepared to resume negotiations over its nuclear program. the u.s. and european officials, however, are skeptical such talks will happen. iran has delayed similar negotiations in the past and is yet to formally commit a delegation to a new round of talks scheduled for later this month. and usa today," several school districts throughout the u.s. are considering a ban on energy drinks such as a-hour energy and red bull. a recent study found emergency room visits linked to such drinks doubled over the past four years. in 2011, the energy drink industry was valued at $8.9
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billion. can i just say, anybody feel comfortable -- does anybody drink those thing? >> no. >> kids. >> have you guys ever drank red bull? i've known a few adults -- i know the "morning joe" staff does. >> it's not good for you. >> i've been worried about them. >> morning joe" staff has it on an i.v. drip. >> you ever do red bull? >> i've sampled it. >> i think heilmann has sampled everything at one point in time. >> it's kind of asked and answered. >> it's perfecty legal. >> it is perfectly legal. i would be concerned about my children. >> i think it's on the line, actually. >> yes, there's a lot of caffeine and sugar in that thing. that's all it is. >> and the kids line up at starbucks getting these really strong drinks, too. i think we're going to have a problem. i don't want to get you all mad at me. >> i mix it with vodka now and then. >> which actually is the worst-case scenario. if somebody's drinking vodka, you know, usually slows them. you don't want to speed them up while they're doing that. what about the story about chris kyle? >> oh, it's just horrible.
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>> he was so -- so untouchable over there that the iraqi insurgents called him the devil of ramadi. and they put a bounty on his head. they couldn't touch him in iraq, but he gets killed at home. >> trying to help somebody. >> trying to help somebody. >> apparently he would take veterans to these ranges to sort of work through stuff with them and talk with them. it was some sort of therapy. ends up getting killed along with another man. horrible. let's go to "politico" now. with us now, the chief white house correspondent for "politico," mike allen who's here with the "morning playbook." "politico" is looking at how some wall street donors are airing their grievances to gop leaders after the mitt romney debacle. please explain. >> yeah, mika, i know you're hearing this in your day-to-day conversations. republicans in new york who were such an important part of
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financing the romney campaign, of financing any national republican campaigns, are really unhappy with republicans. there's the bait-sick issue, the fact that they don't think they got much return on their investment in the 2012 race, but also even since then, republicans up in new york feel like republicans down here have been rubbing it in. the continued emphasis on social issue, holding up sandy aid in the house really irritated a lot of the top donors up in new york. and they feel that the party is not doing enough to diversify. in new york, diversity is a part of your daily life to a lot of republicans, it's very exotic. so as senate candidates, as national republicans go up to new york, they're finding real pushback on giving the way that they did before. senator rob portman of ohio is sort of the senate republicans' ambassador to wall street. he recently did 12 meetings in two days up there. and he got a lot of pushback.
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they want to be sure that there are candidates that can win and that the party is going to have a different face that it did in 2012. >> you know, if they're all sane like rob portman, steve, that's an easy sell, but rob has to go up and sell a party up in washington that's just out of their mind. they're not selling mitch daniels. they're not selling jeb bush. they're selling some people that are too extreme to win elections. we botched it in 2010. we botched it in 2012. and most of these people that rob are going to, they've made a lot of money by making smart investments. they're not going to be suckered into making, you know, a stupid investment in 2014 as well. >> well, they certainly want to win, but there's also a couple of other fundamental issues here. first, most republicans at least that i know in new york tend to be fiscally conservative and socially liberal. they're with the president on things like gay marriage. they're not interested in republican views on contraception and some other things. they're in a different place on those issues. they left obama because of some
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of the rhetoric that existed before the 2012 campaign. but that's basically fundamentally where they are. and secondly, i think that as people try to assess blame for what's going on in washington now on the budget impasse and all the mess, i think they are putting it disproportionately on the republicans. i think there's a perception that it's the republicans' intransigence to be reasonable that's kept us from having a sensible budget policy, and that bothers a lot of my wall street friends. >> so mike allen, we've been talking about karl rove this morning. does that -- i would guess that doesn't assuage many fears, does it? >> well, no. and that's a reflection of the same reticence to give again. american crossroads is trying to come up with a new program, something new for them to invest in. but a lot of pushback about that from conservatives who correctly point out that the establishment was against marco rubio in his senate race, was against ted cruz in his senate race in texas. and so there's this real battle
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between the republican party of the establishment, who wants to give a better face to donors like new york and the conservatives who say look at the leaders who came out despite the establishment. >> well, in the case of rubio and cruz, the establishment was right 50% of the time. it's not like we were going to lose texas. all right, mike, thank you so much. >> thank you, mike. >> have a great week. >> wur colleague, jonathan martin's going to join us for a piece that congressional democrats are warning the president that he needs to do a better job of engaging them this term. and coming up next, a full recap of yesterday's big game. hopefully our studio lights will stay on. >> is t.j. here? >> he's not. >> good, they'll stay on. >> we're good.
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it hasn't sunk in yet. crazy. unbelievable. tough to put into words because it just really hasn't sunk in yet. i don't even think it's sunk in that we're here, let alone won the thing, so pretty cool. >> the way that game played out when it was 28-6 and the lights went out and whatever happened, i just knew with jim harbaugh being on the other sideline and all those years that we've been together, that that game was
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going to be a dogfight right to the end. that those guys were coming back. >> i just try to let my teammates at this moment know what we feel like. and last night when i had the conversation with them, you know, that just came directly from my heart to tell them what this feeling would feel like and what god has showed me and for us to finish the way we did. you know, the sermon this morning our pastor gave was finish the race. finish the race. and as a team, we finished the race. >> just one story in sports, of course, the ravens' super bowl victory, you're looking not live here, fans flooding the streets in baltimore last night, celebrating the hometown team's hard-fought win over the 49ers. they're probably still out there. maybe we'll get some live pictures later. let's go back to the highlights from new orleans. before the game, the two head coaches, the brothers, john and jim harbaugh sharing a little from termin fraternal moment. ray lewis savoring the moment. first possession of the game, joe flacco finds a leaping
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anquan boldin for the touchdowns. ravens up 7-0. second quarter, 49ers have the ball. kaepernick sails it over the head of his receiver. ed reed grabs it, takes it back to the 38. things get a little chippy then. shoving, pushing. a little bit of extracurriculars. nobody got thrown out. a couple of penalties. the harbaughs come on the field to try to break things up. ensuing possession. flacco looks keep, connects with jones. catches the ball, falls, but nobody touches him. something a little juke, a little twist and then goes for the corner, makes it into the end zone for the touchdown. ravens go up 21-3. top of the second half. watch this return. jones takes the ball all the way back. was originally called 109-yard return. ended up being judged 108. still tied for the longest play in super bowl history. ravens go up 28-6. it looks like the game is over. the rout is on. and then 49ers get the ball back and the lights go out.
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the announcers were left with a lot of time to talk. >> people of gotham. >> they don't get back on the field for 34 excruciating minutes. twitter blew up. nobody knows still what exactly happened. they say it was an abnormality in the electrical system. finally after the players stretched and talked, lights come back. 49ers come alive, they score 17 unanswered points in the third quarter to make the game close. in the fourth quarter, they're down by eight. kaepernick gets flushed out of the pocket and then runs, as he did all night, makes it into the end zone. brings it down to 31-29. they don't get the two-point conversion. this is the big play of the game. in the fourth quarter. if you look at it, it looks hike he throws the fade to michael crabtree. it looked like a penalty. certainly the coach thought it was. a lot of contact. announcers, i think, had it right. you get a play like this, you've got to make the catch. it's the super bowl, it's the end of the game. there was contact on both sides. >> he couldn't get to the ball!
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>> they get the ball back after a safety that they took. tried to return. and no laterals. i wanted some laterals. but the game ends right there. 34-31, 49ers' rally comes up just short. ray lewis in his last game wins big. ravens get their second super bowl. they won one other one last decade. joe flacco is the mvp with his three-touchdown performance. after the game, both teams reflected on their big night in the big easy. all right. sorry. four hours, 14 minutes. that's the longest game ever, ever in super bowl history, although you got that lights-out delay kind of an asterisk next to it. >> that will do it. >> great game. >> cbs and the ratings. >> how do you get down and have four plays within closer than ten yards to the goal line, kaepernick as your quarterback and not run? >> rolled him out. >> the craziest play calling i've ever seen. >> seemed a little ridiculous. >> nuts. >> that is a great question. do that little run that he ran
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for 80 yards, make the defense choose. >> it was odd play calling. >> it was strange. all right. coming up next, we've got the "must-read opinion pages." also, bloomberg businessweek explains how hillary clinton gave silicon valley a boost when she left the state department. you're watching "morning joe" brewed by starbucks. [ kitt ] you know what's impressive?
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delivering whatever the world needs, when it needs it. ♪ after all, what's the point of talking if you don't have something important to say? ♪ welcome back to "morning joe" at 46 past the hour. joining us now from "bloomberg businessweek," elizabeth dwoskin. your column for "bloomberg businessweek" is on how hillary clinton helped silicon valley on her way out the door. and in part, you write this. "one of hillary clinton's new
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initiatives, the alliance for an affordable internet merits attention. if successful, the project, a public-private partnership between the state department, the worldwide web foundation and tech companies such as google, microsoft and intel, could end up helping many people in poor countries get onto the web. it could also cement long-term ties between the state department and the companies while opening new markets and reaching new customers for silicon valley. it's another sign of how her legacy will play itself out for years to come. in terms of what she's done. >> exactly. i've written a lot about how she has tried to turn the state department into sort of a business promotion machine. and traditionally this has been with, you know, industries like aerospace, companies like boeing, the tech world, you know, coming into the state department and getting help from the u.s. government is newer. but obviously, google, yahoo! these companies have a lot to gain from getting people
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internet access in places like africa all around the developing world. on average in developed countries, about 70% of people are online. it's only 20% of people in the developing world. and the reason is that the costs are prohibitive. and it's actually not because people are so poor. it's because the market is completely skewed. so you have silicon valley really wants to get in. and hillary clinton's going to try to help them. >> go ahead. >> what do you think that actually means in practice? alliances get announced every day. most of them never see the light of day in terms of any substantive impact. how does this actually work? what actually happens? who's putting up the money? i'm assuming there must be money involved. why do we think this one's going to actually accomplish something? >> the reason this was interesting to me, actually, the story starts with this woman whose name is ann mae chang. she was the senior product developer at google. she worked 25 years in silicon vall valley. she said i'm done with the private sector, i'm going to go into the public sector and joins
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the state department. she goes to nairobi billed by eric schmidt as africa's potential silicon valley. she moves to nairobi to figure out why have the kenyans been so successful in bringing in the internet when getting access to their people when no one else has been able to do this. she starts inviting her former colleagues, people she knows from silicon valley to come in. and what they're looking at is that, you know, for you to get an internet connection in -- she's very smart and interesting. if i'm going to be in, like, ethiopia and i want to go on the web, my web traffic actually has to go all the way to paris and back, which slows down traffic. it costs providers a lot of money to, you know, use the international fiber optic cables. so basically, there's a lot of things that governments can do which would make the internet cheaper and hence help american companies come in, but they haven't. kenya has invested. so she studied heavily this kenya example of why this government was able to do so.
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and we don't know if it's going to work, but, you know, in kenya, the companies were able to make a lot of inroads. and so the question is now will they be able to do that in other places? and i think that it has a good shot. >> you know, hillary has really turned the state department into sort of a hybrid between the state department and the commerce department, hasn't she? it seems to me like she's done the sort of things that you expect the commerce department to do. but never really did it as effectively. >> right, as we talked about, the commerce department is a backwater department that people don't really pay attention to, and hillary clinton has this giant global megaphone, being who she is, and she has gone around the world basically behind the scenes sort of cementing deals for companies. this hasn't, you know, led to any major deals yet, but it is interesting to see how silicon valley is starting to use lobbying and diplomacy to get what it wants. >> let's get one for must-read in.
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here's paul krugman. he writes -- he makes a lot of sense in this one. he writes in "the new york times," "friends of fraud. what republicans are demanding, basically, is that the protection, the consumer financial protection bureau, lose its independence. they want its actions subjected to a veto by other bank-centered financial regulators ensuring that consumers will once again be neglected, and they also want to take away its guaranteed funding, opening it, meaning the consumer financial protection bureau, to interest-group pressure. how can the gop be so determined to make america safe for financial fraud, with the 2008 crisis still so fresh in our memory? in part because republicans are deep in denial about what actually happened to our financial system and economy. on the right, it's now complete orthodoxy that do-gooder liberals, especially former representative barney frank, somehow caused the financial disaster by forcing helpless bankers to lend to those
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people." and they're all so threatening to filibuster the appointment of cordray. they just won't let this newbaunew bureau do its job. they don't want it around. >> this is one that we have to agree with krugman. he's right. the fact is that out of all -- without relitigating how we got into the financial crisis and all the rest of it, the fact is that a lot of bad stuff happened. they set up a consumer financial protection agency in order to protect consumers just the way we have various other agencies that protect consumers from other things. and it was passed in a law. and now the republicans are basically saying we're not going to confirm anybody. and i don't think that's sort of playing fair. >> i saw a piece the other day that talked about -- a conference i think that you were at in washington where bill kristol talked about you've got people looking back at how the republican party went wrong, its problems that need to get remedied. and kristol made the point that the financial meltdown, republicans had never given a coherent explanation of what their theory of the case was.
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his analysis, it sounds just like paul krugman's analysis. it's my view that if they agree about something, it's probably right. >> and the argument was that if you didn't like dodd-frank, then bill kristol, said republicans, you should have come up with your own alternative like republicans used to do. they haven't done that. in this case all they're doing is standing in the way. >> it's not just -- it's not just the consumer financial protection bureau. you have 135 nominees right now for positions across government that aren't high-profile positions but are essential to the functioning of government that are being held up because of this slowed-down nomination process. >> and boy, i was really surprised, steve, by the ruling that basically undermined any president's ability on appointments. i doubt that's going to be upheld by the court because it's republican and democratic administrations have so depended
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on it. but wow, it certainly puts a freeze on everything right now. >> first, i'm not sure it's not going to be upheld by the court. i'm not a constitutional lawyer. but the arguments for why recess appointments shouldn't be legal seem reasonable to me. if you don't have recess appointments and you have this gridlock in getting anybody confirmed -- >> then nothing happens. >> -- then nothing happens, and it's terrible. it's just another step back for government. >> elizabeth, thank you so much. great to have you on the show. we'll be reading your piece on hillary clinton online at businessweek.com. where you also have been writing on the issue of immigration reform. so we'll watch for that. >> love to get you back on that, too. something might happen in washington. >> yeah, maybe no gridlock. >> maybe. >> maybe. still ahead, former senior adviser to the president, david axelrod. keep it right here on "morning joe." [ female announcer ] when a woman wears a pad
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come on, now. coming up next, "time" magazine's rana foroohar joins us on set. also, "politico's" jonathan martin. we're back in a moment. to pick up some accessories. a new belt. some nylons. and what girl wouldn't need new shoes?
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washington cannot continually operate under a cloud of crisis. that freezes up consumers. it gets businesses worried. we can't afford these self-inflicted wounds. and there is a way for us to solve these budget problems in a responsible way through a balanced approach that the vast majority of people agree with. if we do that, there's no reason why we can't have really strong growth in 2013. but, you know, we can't have
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washington dysfunction getting in the way. >> welcome back to "morning joe." mark halperin and steve rattner are still with us. take a live look at the white house in washington, d.c. the sun is coming up. it is time to wake up. everyone had a late night last night with the super bowl. joining us on set, assistant managing editor for "time" magazine, rana foroohar. great color. that's waking me up. >> that was the idea. >> that was fantastic. >> so that was the president's -- is it pregame interview with -- so we can play a little more, he talked about the economy. when it comes to tackling the nation's deficit, president obama said sunday in an interview with cbs news there needs to be revenue involved. and it sounds like he might be interested in going after people like mitt romney. >> there is no doubt we need additional revenue coupled with smart spending reductions in order to bring down our deficit. and we can do it in a gradual way so that it doesn't have a huge impact. and as i said, when you look at
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some of these deductions that certain folks are able to take advantage of, the average person can't take advantage of them. the average person doesn't have access to cayman island accounts. the average person doesn't have access to carried interest income where they end up paying a much lower rate on billions of dollars that they've earned. so we just want to make sure that the whole system is fair. >> all right. steve, help me out here. i think the democrats are holding a losing hand if they come back and ask for more taxes. they talk about raising tax rates on anybody. but if we're talking about closing loopholes, carried interest, sort of doing what warren buffett said, you know, he shouldn't be paying 16 -- that argument goes with most americans. is that what we're talking about now? >> essentially. so here's where the fight is. >> not higher rates but closing these loopholes. >> the president is not going to come back and ask for higher rates. i think we're done on higher rates. what he's saying is let's close some of these loopholes.
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the ones he mentioned happen not to be the biggest money savers. but then he's saying let's take that money and add it to the revenue pot to help balance the budget. the republicans are saying, fine, let's do those things, but let's use that money to lower rates. so that's where the battle's going to be fought between the republicans wanting to use that tax reform money to lower rates and the democrats saying let's use it to close the deficit. >> i'd love the rates to be lowered, but mark halperin, that's not going to happen. the rates are where they are at least until republicans get smart and start electing people that can get elected to the white house. but republicans seem to be -- would seem to be on the losing side of the argument, if they're going to go out -- and we talked about bill kristol, he said this, too, right after the election, maybe we should stop defending the really, really, really rich guys. there's no reason they should be paying 16% tax rates and the rest of us paying 28%, 35%, now 39%. >> look, we've got a bunch of fiscal cliff fights coming up on
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the sequester and new government spending for there to keep from being a shutdown. the big issue to me, the president didn't refer to it, because steve referred to things that make a little money, is scaling back some of these deductions, what mitt romney ran on, home mortgage, charitable health care, state and local taxes. if putting a cap on those in some way or limiting them in some way, that's where you could get a deal where you could see if not lower rates, rates stay where they are, but more revenue comes in. >> let's talk it really quickly. last week we had paul krugman on. i actually enjoyed the interview. >> so did he. >> no, i mean, he's written, like, three blogs about it. finally, telling the deficit hawks to calm down, he got it in the end which i guess was an interesting week for him. let's talk about economic reality here, okay? the president's talking about revenue. and i think republicans should just give on closing it. because you heard him talking about cuts, sensible cuts, as if the cuts are a small part of the
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pie. the cuts are the big part of the pie in long-term debt, and democrats still don't want to talk about it. they still don't want to put a budget out. the president still doesn't want to tell the truth about medicare. he still doesn't want to tell the truth about medicaid, about social security. i mean, this isn't a small part of saving america. lowering spending over the next generation is a huge part of saving america. >> look, one of the tragedies of what's been going on down there is we have been cutting but we've been cutting indiscriminately. we've been whacking with a meat ax and cutting programs like infrastructure, education, r&d. >> we're not cutting where the money is. >> and we're not cutting where the money is. nobody really wants -- i don't want to cut medicare, but we've got to deal with medicare if we're going to get this budget deficit under control. but frankly, look. the president and the republicans are playing their cards close to their vests. republicans are saying no new revenue. democrats are saying no new cuts on entitlements. >> can i just jump in and say, though, cuts are important.
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you're going to need them eventually, but it's better and smarter to do it when you're back on your historic trend growth which in this country is more like 3% a year versus the 2% that we're in. and another thing on taxes, one thing that amazes me that really hasn't sunk in yet is that tax hikes don't necessarily cut growth. i mean, just look at what happened in the clinton era. or look at all the tax cuts we've done actually in the post world war ii era, we have done 18 tax hikes in order to reduce deficit. each time the market has risen. so i just don't think that a lot of the republican line about the danger of tax hikes is right. >> well, and steve, the scenario you set up sounds like we're going to have the same old battles all over again because if we were to agree on closing loopholes but then start bickering over whether or not to lower rates again, that's last year all over again. why can't we close loopholes? >> we're going to have the same old battles all through this year. and look, in a perfect world, what rana says is correct. you'd like to keep the budget in
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a spending mode for the moment because of the weak economy and then start bringing the deficit down. and there's a way to fine tune this, but congress is not in the fine-tuning business. they're in the meat ax business. >> let's say, again, this is a point that we tried to make with a certain nobel prize-winning economist last week. >> bearded. >> bearded. >> glasses. >> by the way, i thought it was great. i had a fantastic time. i hope he did, too. but we're not talking about austerity. we're not talking about david cameron-style austerity. i have to keep repeating this every single day here because nobody seems to get this. you can do two things at once. you can take care of the long-term debt, right? just like i have money set aside to take care of my mortgage. and you can take care of the short-term problems, which is i've got to buy the kids a new jacket. because it's cold outside. or whatever. you can do two things at once. we can take care of the long-term debt. we have to take care of the long-term debt, and we can't wait another ten years.
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but you can do that without engaging in david cameron-style austerity up short. and nobody seems to want to admit that. >> well, it's true. we're not europe. and we don't want to be europe because obviously austerity hasn't worked. that was a big topic at the world economic forum a couple of weeks ago. but here's what would be really sensible. this is way too sensible to get done in washington. but if we all agreed that yes, we need to do cuts but let's do them when we're at 3%, put in some kind of mechanism for that to happen automatically, i mean, way too sensible, but that's what you want to do. you also don't want to cut things that will help you grow. >> that's the short term. okay, but listen. when paul krugman says we're going to worry about medicare and medicaid when the programs collapse 15, 20 years from now, so i'm not going to worry about it until it collapses. at that point the damage will be so bad for senior citizens that we can't wait that long. so yes, if you're talking about discretionary domestic spending, fine.
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we can talk about that 3% trigger. we certainly don't want to slash and burn while we are actually our gdp's going down. but why can't we plan ahead to save medicare for seniors? why can't we plan ahead to save social security for seniors today? today? >> the step it skips, though, is how do we get to 3%? >> that's right. >> the real question about this year -- >> hold on. >> what are the policies that gets to 3% or above in. >> i can't let this conversation go on until we have a basic understanding here. and i'm dead serious because i'm getting tired of this, okay? >> whoa! >> i am. because you say it every day, and nobody seems to get it. me taking care of medicare 20 years from now does not impact spending because we're not talking right now about lowering benefits for recipients. we're not talking about slashing reimbursements to medical providers now.
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this is something that you're going to plan in the out years. you can do that now without -- >> but you'll never get harry reid to do that under the current economic conditions because as was said earlier, under these conditions, you must cut much more than harry reid is willing to cut. we need a sweet spot where there's enough growth so that they don't need to cut as much to deal with the program. but not too much growth that the programs look like they're out of the woods. >> but what joe is saying, which is correct, is that trim these kinds of programs takes a long time. if you're going to raise the medicare eligibility age, just take one proposal that's floating around out there, nobody, even paul ryan, is suggesting it happen tomorrow. they're suggesting it happen ten years from now. >> ten years from now. let's stop right now. >> they have to put it in place now. >> so there's a cut that we put in place today for, you know, 2023. okay? is there any question, does that impact our gdp over the next three years? no, it does not.
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it just doesn't. >> no, but if you're a politician from florida, you might have a problem with it. rana. >> listen, do we need to have a real serious conversation about entitlement reform? absolutely. >> we have to have more than a conversation. >> we need action on that. but honestly, right now in the next two to five years, i'm worried about growth because if you look at the economy as a whole, if you look at what happened again in the clinton era, you can grow your way out of a lot of problems if you do the right things. and we have -- let me just finish -- >> i'm worried about growth, too. we will not grow ourselves out of the medicare and medicaid problem. >> let me just say, compared to the rest of the rich world, we are doing so well. if you look at the underlying economy right now, if you look at the numbers that have nothing to do with washington, they're really good. you know? the jobs numbers are firm. the construction figures are coming up, housing is recovering. so if the government could help that growth a little bit, i think we'd be in a lot better place. >> but the government -- >> steve, hold on. i think we're agreeing. >> wait a minute. we're agreeing?
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>> i think we're agreeing unless you're taking the paul krugman position which is we don't have to worry about medicare or medicaid. >> no, i'm not taking the krugman position. >> that's why i'm saying let's invest in education, in r&d, infrastructure, let's invest now. but while we're doing that, we have to make tough choices about what happens the next 10 to 20 years. >> i want to do exactly what you say, but congress now is doing the opposite of what you say because they are cutting education, r&d, infrastructure, all the things that would help the economy grow. i'm all in favor of trying to get growth back to 3% if i had a congress that understood the economics of how to do that. but you don't do that by cutting payroll taxes a couple percent or whacking domestic spending. >> this is why with no grand bargain, all of this seems impossible. and the fact that they've given up on a grand bargain i think means we're not going to deal with things you want in a big, macro, long-term way. >> also talking about tax increases. it's one thing to increase taxes, as bill clinton did in
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1993, in the middle of an i.t. explosion, in the middle of a revolution where the economy's growing. it's quite another to increase taxes even more when we're actually upside down right now in our gdp, right? >> it depends on the kind of taxes you're talking about. the payroll tax, yeah, that affects a lot of average people. that's $2,000 a year for the average american. big deal. but taxes on the wealthiest americans, no. i don't think that that will hurt growth. i simply don't believe -- i think that we've shown that trickle-down over the last two decades, that philosophy really hasn't worked. i don't think that that's going to hurt. and if you look historically at growth from the 1950s till now, the periods where it was booming really have nothing to do with tax rates. >> i love what warren buffett said. you know, nobody ever -- when i call somebody and tell them i've got a great stock to pick, nobody ever stops and says, well, i don't know if i can invest in that because of capital gains rates going up. >> might have to go to bermuda. >> let's get jonathan martin in
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here, senior political writer for "politico," jonathan martin. jonathan, you have a piece this morning on how the president is facing criticism from democrats on the hill for not engaging them. so what have you found? >> sure. it's mostly on the senate side. my colleague, manny, and i spend a lot of time talking to senate democrats. what you hear is the rank-and-file democrats in the senate say that they just have not heard that much from the president over the last four years, and they're hoping that that changes for his second term. and we've actually learned that there have been some high-level entreaties and staff at the white house to get the president to engage more with the congress. so often this is dismissed as a sort of washington fixation about who the president is socializing with and who he's having up to camp david or over to the white house for a cocktail party. the members that we talked to, guys, it's not about having us to parties. it's about wanting to get to
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know us. learn about our political circumstances. learn about our policy interest and try to have a healthy working relationship. and they just don't see that kind of interest from this president. this is not lbj. this is not george h.w. bush who has sort of personal friendships with a lot of folks on the hill. that's just not who he is. but you talk to folks in the senate, and they say, look, he's got this big, bold agenda for his second term. if he wants to get it done, wants us to take some tough votes for the next couple of years, he's got to spend more time investing in us. >> so here's what part of what you write, interviews with dozens of members of congress and senior aides reveal a sense of frustration and in some cases exasperation that a president who came from the senate has no apparent appetite for cultivating relationships on capitol hill. these democrats say they almost never hear from obama personally, and haven't been to the white house since rahm emanuel was still chief of staff and are mystified why the president passed over popular
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legislative affairs aide for the job as top congressional liaison. one high-profile democrat who recently spoke to a group of hill democrats came away stunned at their anger toward a president they hardly know." what has the white house said in response to this? >> well, the white house says, you know, on background, basically, that we passed a lot of important bills in the first term and look forward to having a productive relationship in the second term. now, more interesting, i talked to the first white house legislative affairs director at some length, and he made a pretty ardent case that the president gets a bad rap on this in passing some of their big-ticket items in the first term. he never heard the president turn down a single request that they made to get him to talk to folks on the hill, to have meetings with folks on the hill. but, you know, i was really struck by a conversation with john tester who's a democrat from montana who just won a tough race last year. he said that he had not been to the white house since a 2010
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lunch with the president, the vice president and rahm emanuel that the president had for the 2006 democratic class. it's remarkable to think you could have a high-profile democrat like john tester who hadn't been to the white house since rahm emanuel was still chief of staff. and by the way, other '06 democrats raised that same topic. they were a little bit more hesitant to talk public about it, but tester was very open about it. >> mark halperin, we hear it all the time from democrats all the time who, you know, won, that got elected not so -- well, a couple years ago, never been to the white house. talked to the president once on the phone. basically asked me what he was like. >> as is pointed out in jonathan's piece, it didn't stop him from having a robust legislative agenda in the first term. >> right. >> and people in jonathan's story that the recommend that
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the president change his ways in the second term should find something else to do. if they want to check items off the to-do list, i think this is the way the president's going to operate in the second term. >> do you really? because there have been some signals, steve, that they may engage a little more the second term. >> i thought the interesting thing in jonathan's comments was he said the president had never turned down a request by his legislative affairs staff. to me with people on the hill. so my question is why the legislative affairs people ask to have these meetings -- >> i think that was an artfully phrased. >> it was artfully phrased. still ahead, david axelrod and john podhoretz. look who's up next. look at you, so dashing. come on.
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nowadays, lots of people go by themselves. no they don't. yeah... hey son. have fun tonight. ♪ prom! [ laughs ] ♪ ♪ ain't nothin to me ♪ back against the wall ♪ ain't nothin to me ♪ keep you down and make you crawl ♪ ♪ ain't nothin to me ♪ cut you down when you feel tall ♪ ♪ ain't nothin to me ♪ ain't nothin to me ♪ ain't nothin to me [ crowd murmurs ] [ cheering ] hey! ♪ ain't nothin to me ♪ ain't nothin to me ♪ [ howls ] ♪
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pretty shot. 23 past the hour. welcome back to "morning joe."
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joining us now on the set, co-founder of "the weekly standard," john podhoretz. >> podhoretz. >> did you get that right? >> as i said to you, the difference between my name -- >> you say it like it rolls off your tongue. >> i have no idea. >> the difference between my name and your name is you pronounce every consonant in my name, but you don't pronounce every consonant in your name. >> exactly, because i have two "zs," but if you say it in polish, you do. would you like to try? >> brzezinski. >> look at that. he's pretty darn good. we have a lot to talk about. first i want to talk about your column, "a liberal sane enough to stay nuts." talk about ed koch. >> i think ed koch, you know, who died on friday, was a very interesting hinge figure in american politics, which you wouldn't ordinarily say about a lot of, you know, mayors, local politicians, because i think he charted a course that the democratic party followed nationally after him by saying
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the excesses of the left were actually impeding good governance, that they were making it worse, not better, and that it took a liberal with sanity, as he called himself, to stand up against the excesses of the far left and chart a course for the future. i think no ed koch, maybe no bill clinton. >> and koch also after 9/11 obviously certainly on foreign policy became much more conservative. >> he always was. i mean, he was always a sort of new york zionist, supported israel wholeheartedly, you know, sent a delegation to central america in the mid-'80s to chart a course against, you know, sort of the communist rule in nicaragua. that sort of thing in foreign policy terms. but in sort of fiscal terms and in governance terms, he would say, you know, siding with criminals over law-abiding citizens is nuts.
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saying it's okay to do graffiti on subways is nuts. saying that it's okay for homeless people to sleep on grates on second avenue is nuts. this was all very much the way ordinary people felt, and they felt that democrats and the leadership of the left had turned against ordinary citizens and the good order of their lives. and he stood up against that. >> right. and seemed same and rational unless you were a member of the democratic establishment in the late '70s and '80s when koch was mayor. so it sounds very sane and rational right now in new york city. it didn't at the time. >> it was a much different -- the thing is that the center of gravity at least they'oreticall in the democratic party moved away from the far left where it was trending in the late '70s and, you know, i mean, i have some issues with the question of whether obama is moving it back in the other direction, but certainly, you know, what bill clinton did by getting the
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democrats back into the center of american society, he needed politicians to chart the course before him, and koch was one of them. >> that's why we've lost 5 out of the 6 past elections of the popular vote. >> so let's talk about that. i want to ask you something that was in the papers over the weekend, these republican donors who are pulling together what's called conservative victory project. >> mm-hmm. >> i guess it's karl rove who's starting the whole thing. what do you make of their efforts, and do you think karl rove is the right person to rebrand and reinvigorate the republican party? >> well, i think there are two interesting aspects of this. one of which is obviously the republican party needs to do something about the fact that it had outlier senatorial candidates whose effect was not only to lose in their own states but to push the party's brand down nationally.
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and secondarily, it also has to do with the fact that the primaries were dominated by outlier candidates who had no chance to win, who pushed those 20 debates into the realm of science fiction. having said that -- >> by the way, i wish i would have had a podhoretz camp in your house while you were watching one french candidate after another take the lead in the republican party's primary process. it was just maddening. >> it was -- i mean, it was actually, i think, nationally embarrassing not just for, you know, republicans but for democrats. it spoke to some decline in our political culture that does not isolate itself to the republican party, that sort of reality television took over the most important political process that we have. the thing about the large donors and trying to bring some sanity to the process is that this is a quick fix that doesn't quite fit. in 2012, it was not just, you know, todd akin and richard
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mourdock in indiana who lost in senatorial elections. very well-funded, very serious mainstream republican candidates, tommy thompson in wisconsin and raberg against tester and lingle in hawaii and heather wilson in new mexico. these were all considered very solid, very middle-of-the-road, the best republican establishment could do, and they lost also. >> and, by the way, mitt romney outperformed all of them, but i think that may lead to john's point about the damage from the mourdocks and the damage from the sarah palins, the damage from the fringe candidates that were leading the charge and define the republican brand. >> that certainly seems true. you made this point that the outlier fenn ophenomenon, the f
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candidate restricted to the party. a bunch of serious candidates, obama, clinton, dodd. that's not a fringy group that ran in 2008. 2012, another opportune moment, a vulnerable incumbent. what does that say about the difference between the two parties, that at moments of opportunity, a very sane group of people -- >> wait a second. >> to go back to 2004, though, as a comparable case in which the field was dominated for the first sick months of the race by an arguable outlier, howard dean, who established that position because he was on the furthest element. >> but not by, like, six of them. >> no. in that case -- >> who essentially went through. >> you can't blame the republican party for that. >> i would say barack obama was an outlier when you had hillary clinton. >> but not a nut.
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>> no, i'm not saying he's a nut, but hillary clinton was the sane, rational pick. was she not? >> the point that i'm trying to make is that the republican party in 2012 lost its a-team because in my view, the brink of 2011, barack obama and his team made it clear that they were going to raise $1 billion and aim it like a laser at one human being's head, you know, that that was the campaign strategy was going to be to raise an enormous amount of money. they weren't going to have a primary. and they were going to focus it on an individual person and a lot of people ran -- a lot of people decided they didn't want to be that target. and you can see what happened. i mean, how much money, $200 million, was spent in ohio. >> oh, my god. >> targeting mitt romney, one man. nothing like that has ever happened. >> $200 million? >> wasn't it? >> no, no. that's stunning. >> so our friend, peggy noonan, has written important and interesting columns in the past couple weeks about a comeback
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for the party. this week she mentioned the two of you as people being part of talking about ac comeback. we talk about the karl rove effort. what are the ideas, what are the areas of policy you see so far potentially emerging that allow the party to recapture the center? >> well, i think that the main question is who has -- and is always the question -- who has the most optimistic, most forward-looking, most growth-oriented vision for the united states and its position, you know, domestically and in the world? >> is that tax policy or -- >> i think it could be the regulatory policy. it could be foreign policy in the sense of seizing the initiative on the notion that the united states should be a harbinger of freedom and peace. there are a variety of things. you know, this is always a dynamic effect, right? right now the republican party
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is torn in some ways between two kinds of camps. this is where maybe where joe and i part company. if the republican party's message is we need to cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, we've got to do something about medicare, we've got to do something about social security, the entitlements, we've got to be the party that stands for less. you get less. everybody gets less. taxes are going to remain relatively high, and you're going to get less. that's going to be a pretty bad -- that's a pretty bad message carried guard. >> you mean that's not going to sell well in middle america, the party of cuts? >> that's right. everything you always want in a party but less, you know. >> that's not what i want. >> they're not serious about cutting, so. >> i mean, actually, some people are really serious about cutting? >> who? who? >> some of the outliers are really serious about cutting. they want to hold -- they want to hold government spending down to 18% of gdp, and they want to cut entitlements. that's cutting. that is a major message. >> the person you're referring to as an outlier is paul ryan.
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>> ultimately he wants to hold it to 18% gdp. >> i'm not that guy. i want to hold it to 19%. that's all i want. so i'm not an 18% guy. >> well, i mean, if the economy grows by 4% or 5% a year, you could reduce -- you could have much of the same. so the question is, is what the president wants going to contribute to growth, or is it going to contribute to really sluggish, you know, growth, and that could be the way back for the republicans. >> it's really great to have you on the show. >> thank you. >> it is great to have you back. >> thank you. >> john podhoretz. >> wow, mika brzezinski. >> that's impressive. coming up, rattner flexes his chart muscles. >> i don't even know what that means. >> i don't want to know what that means. >> this is why we just usually go off prompter. what else is it going to say? >> we've got a new look at the nation's unemployment rate and some sexy, sexy shots of steve. >> plus --
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>> what did they put on the prompter? what is this? >> words from the white house, phrases from past presidents that have become part of everyday conversation. look at that pretty shot of washington. as we go to break. we'll be right back. how do you keep an older car running like new? you ask a ford customer. when they tell you that you need your oil changed you got to bring it in. if your tires need to be rotated, you have to get that done as well. jackie, tell me why somebody should bring they're car here to the ford dealership for service instead of any one of those other places out there. they are going to take care of my car because this is where it came from. price is right no problem, they make you feel like you're a family. get a synthetic blend oil change, tire rotation and much more, $29.95 after $10.00 rebate. if you take care of your car your car will take care of you.
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what do you have in your hand? >> i hate thomas roberts. >> why do you hate thomas roberts? >> i hate him. >> what's going on? >> he gave me these super bowl napkins and these cookies that i can't stop eating because i knows i'm addicted to them. they're covered with chocolate. he does this all the time. he must want something. >> he just mocks you. he mocks you. stop doing that. can i have one? >> no, they're very bad for you. >> which is why i want them. so steve rattner, you've got charts, and america wants to know, what do those charts say about friday's jobs report? >> a little more insight into the friday jobs numbers which we all saw, again, modest job increases ran 160,000. employment ticked up. behind those numbers, there are a couple interesting things happening in the economy. the first is that the bls
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revised backwards its jobs numbers for the past two years. and it increased the number of jobs created. this is monthly job totals for 2012/2011. so they raised 2012 by 28,000 jobs per month. and they raised 2011 by about the same amount. so in fact, 2012, better than we thought. and the gdp number that we saw the other day, probably not a good indicator. the economy's a bit stronger than we thought. now, inside of that there's some interesting things happening. the most interesting thing happening is that for the first time, you're starting to see a significant drop in the longer-term unemployed. people who have been out of work between six months and three years. their numbers dropped by 16% even though total unemployed on dropped by 6%. now, in the six-month -- >> these are people that we hear are discouraged that don't even look for jobs so they're not counted in these calculations. >> well, the ones who are still looking are and they're getting more jobs. the people who are unemployed six months, they get jobs quickly. they turn over. and the really discouraged
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category, the three years or more, and this gets to that baby boomer story if you saw it in "the new york times" over the weekend, they're still in a pretty tough spot. but there is good news on some of the long-term unemployed. and the other piece of good news is in the so-called new claims for unemployment insurance, this is sort of the best forward indicator we have of where unemployment might be going. people applying for unemployment insurance for the first time. and this number has been coming down. and is now at its lowest point since march of 2008. >> tell us what we're looking at again here. these are people for the first time? >> who walked into their unemployment office and asked for unemployment insurance for the first time. so it gives you an indication of what's coming down the road in terms of jobs. >> it should be a leading indicator. >> it's a leading indicator. and you can see the way it's dropped. now, finally, amidst all this news, we also had news on friday from the stock market where the dow jones was up, crossed 14,000 for the first time since 2007. it's within 150 points of its all-time high.
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the point here i want to make is you've got the stock market at an all-time high. you've still got 3.2 million fewer jobs in this economy than you had in 2008. and now you can understand better why america is still angry at wall street. >> i mean, average household income down over the past four years. poverty rates up over the past four years, and yet wall street almost doubles. why is that such a disconnect? >> companies have been really good at squeezing their labor costs and holding down what they pay people. it's part of globalization. it's part of what's going on in the world. it's one of the things to worry about, joe. along with the deficit. >> so basically, john, these people out of work, it sounds like that's good for wall street. >> well, wall street's managed to, steve said, capitalize on that. whenever i look at those stock market charts, it always makes me wonder, how does barack obama gets characterized as being so anti-wall street? he must really hate the financial sector? that stock market table just looks like they've been beat up.
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>> the stock market is up 120% since march of 2009. >> which, again, makes -- >> qed. >> -- makes the point that warren buffett's making. if people have the chance to make money, they're going to make money. >> right. >> they're not going to be sitting there obsessing over, you know, this tax rate or that. >> thank you, steve. >> you're welcome. >> thaw, stenk you, steve. >> sexy charts. next, from military industrial complex to sputnik moment, the memorable words and phrases coined by american presidents. keep it right here on "morning joe." this is so sick!
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our fifth objective. a new world order can emerge. a new era freer from the threat of terror. >> north korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction. iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror. iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward america and to support terror. states like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil. >> half a century ago when the soviets beat us into space with a the launch of a satellite called sputnik, we had no idea how we would beat them to the moon. this is our generation's sputnik moment. >> all right. 47 past the hour. welcome back to "morning joe." from sputnik moment to axis of evil, remember that? >> how did your parents deal with that? >> they jumped out of their beds. they were in bed with their pajamas on. >> they got angry. >> they were very angry.
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my mother was infuriated. >> yeah. >> the new book, "words from the white house," looks at the words and phrases that are now part of our everyday vocabulary thanks to past presidents and their speechwriters and advisers. joining us on set, the book's author, paul dixon. i love this. i'm going to make my children read it. a great way of looking back in time. >> paul, let's talk about some of the more famous phrases. start with harry truman's "the buck stops here." where did that come from? when did truman put it on his desk? >> it was actually a sign that somebody bought at a prison. the buck that they're referring to is the buck used in poker. that was one that he picked up. some of the presidents -- with other famous trumanism is trocar, he wanted to use a trocar in congress. it was an instrument used in farming when a cow or a bovine being got too much gas from eating clover. they would use the trocar to eliminate the gas. >> okay. >> he said what congress needed was a trocar.
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>> okay. founding fathers, this was very interesting that founding fathers was actually a term that came about in the 20th century. >> which really -- that's what got me going on the book. when i found out that warren harding, who's also known for normalcy and bloviate. two of his coinages. in 1918, harding -- the term then was founders or the framers. framers of the constitution. harding in 1918 starts using "founding fathers." in the campaign he keeps talking about the founding fathers often in the negative. he said the founding fathers never meant for us to do this. when i really started looking at that term, i started looking at what other terms have come through presidents? i found remarkable things including jefferson. there are 113 terms. >> give us a couple terms. >> belittle. he did that to basically anger the british.
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he would create words -- he and adams -- >> so he made up "belittle." >> he made up ottoman for the footstool, not the empire. he writes a letter to john adams in 1820. saying that it was our job as americans to neologize. the early patriots believed almost as an act of defiance that we had to create an american language. so you had noah webster writing it all down. and you had benjamin franklin coaching him. so there's this package of benj coaching him. lot of these guys did it on purpose. >> fdr followed in that great tradition, he created the word "iffy" and when he used finalized in a second state of the union address critics went crazy. >> that was eisenhower. >> finalize? >> finalize and a lot of presidents got in trouble for example, fdr once talked about chisellers in a speech and the critics got crazy about that.
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woodrow wilson is the first president who really gets in trouble for using slang and wilson had been a football coach at two colleges so wilson would say we got to get a move on, we got to get going out there and he would talk to the country as if he was a coach. the critics would say he should never use this kind of english. lot got in trouble including george w. bush for imbetter and things like that. >> keeping the ball rolling william harrison there was a ball. >> they moved from town to town. >> for what purpose? >> to create buzz. it was a campaign game mick, a giant ball made with paper mac hi er and wire. the early presidents, john adams' caucus. madison came up with squatter. these guys saw the language as
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something we had to create on our own. webster kept saying we have to create an american language. it's not the king's english, the language of the trader and the trapper and the farmer. >> fascinating one martin van buren, ok. >> old kinderhook. the first summer in august everything in washington gets all wee-wee'd up. >> teddy radios development coo loose cannon and sees the armor in new york and sees the descending staircase and comes
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up with packrat, one of his trips to south america he sees the rat picking up pieces and comes one the word packrat which is not a scientific name when you address that. he came one malfactors of great wealth. there are just one after another. when he's running, the final time he runs for presidency he said i'm going to throw my hat in the ring. >> teddy roosevelt, t.r. baby. >> do you use these afternoon? do you and your family? i could see how you might not be able to stop. >> no, you can't and it's like a compulsive collector of baseball cards. >> i could see you being impulsive about it. >> it's fun and makes conversations and i go to parties and can tell stories and it works. >> i'm going to bring you along with me to some parties. >> it would be fun. >> the book is "words from the
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white house" paul dixon, this is fantastic. david axelrod joins us in a few minutes. keep it here on "morning joe." all stations come over to mission a for a final go. this is for real this time. step seven point two one two. verify and lock. command is locked. five seconds. three, two, one. standing by for capture. the most innovative software on the planet... dragon is captured. is connecting today's leading companies to places beyond it. siemens. answers. woman: what do you mean, homeowners insurance doesn't cover floods? [ heart rate increases ] man: a few inches of water caused all this?
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half the power in new
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orleans stadium, the superdome here is out, and almost a perfect semicircle of the lights, half the stadium stayed light, half of it went out, the scoreboard is also not working as well. one big click of the light switch, and we lost power in half of the stadium. >> good morning, it's 8:00 on the east coast, 5:00 a.m. on the west coast as you take a live look at new york city, and back with us on set, mark halperin, john heilman. >> where have they been all our lives. >> what a game. mika, you had to stay on every play eating your fried hotdogs and -- >> no. >> she was there. she was there, beginning to end. >> no. >> is it true when you watch a game you score it at home? >> no, i was at a cafe in lower manhattan actually. >> you were? >> i did see beyonce.
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>> and? >> she was hot, that was good. >> yeah? >> yeah, i thought so. what'd you guys think? apparently she did not lip sync. >> i would prefer jennifer hudson and the sandy hook choir. it was so moving. that was fantastic and the game was pretty good, too. >> we had some good super bowls of late. >> interesting game, though. went one way, went the other way. >> within 34 minutes interminable minutes. anybody pick the 49ers? i think we all picked the ravens last week. >> i did. >> you picked the 49ers? >> i did, didn't i? >> i don't know. >> i think i did. >> i like the niners. nate silver picked the 49ers. >> did he really? >> i tell you what, nate is great when it comes to politics but a rough run of it in football. >> let's get to politics. >> it was a great game, though. >> okay. that's enough. i want to get to the stats.
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>> what did you count on the super bowl would be a terrible game. they've all been great. the super bowl is suddenly a good sporting event. to politics now, president obama takes this push for new gun control measures on the road to minneapolis today where he'll share ideas with law enforcement leaders on how to curb gun violence this as nra's chief executive wayne lapierre continued his spirited defense of gun rights this weekend, speaking with fox news's chris wallace about that controversial nra ad that brought the president's children into the gun debate. >> the president's kids are safe and we're all thankful for it. the point of that ad -- >> they also face a threat most children do not face. >> tell that to the people in newtown. >> you really think the president's children are the same kind of target as every schoolchild in america? that's ridiculous and you know
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it, sir. >> you know, unfortunately, i think there are parents all over the school, all over the country that think their kids are entitled to the same amount of protection when they go to school and they want -- >> so they should have secret service in. >> they should have police officers or certified armed security in those schools to keep people safe. >> one of the points of that ad that i want to ask you about is you made it a class argument, the rich, the elite. >> sure. >> sththey have body guards and security. >> sure. mayor bloomberg has body guards. >> i'll tell you somebody else who has security. you do. >> sometimes. yes. >> capitol hill you had security. today you have security. >> yes, you talk about hypocrisy on the open, we've had all kinds of threats coming. >> does that make you an out of touch elite because you have accurate? >> i don't deny the right to anybody for security when they need it. it is ridiculous, chris, for the elites, powerful privileged titans of industry to send their
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kids to school when where there's armed security and have access to semiautomatic technology. >> chris wallace, good on him. wayne lapierre doing this class argument, i don't know what's wrong with him and i don't know what's wrong with the overwhelming majority people in the nra that aren't part of this survivalist wing and there is this elite ad body guards and rich ad body guards, we the people. he's got more body guards than most anybody else, and this argument chris wallace really drilled down on there the argument, seriously, that all of our children deserve the same amount of protection as the president of the united states' children? that's the problem with wayne lapierre and the extremist wing of the nra's arguments. they're stupid arguments. they get to say oh, and while a
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mother's clutching her bushmaster with -- they're stupid arguments. there's no logic. they're ruling by fear. they rule their people by fear and he's called out here, just ridiculous argument that he's making. >> chris wallace, my former colleague at abc, outstanding job, without fear of favor or id ideological point of view, great job. if you chart every day in the public relations between whose who want more gun control and those who want less, the team who wants more has won almost every new cycle. chris wallace pressed him and showed him a lot of the arguments wayne lapierre is making are not going to the question. >> you see him stumbling around? because there's no defense. >> chris did a good job and the president out on the road continuing to push, they still have momentum on their side and the nra side hasn't figured out
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how to defuse it. >> and there's more -- >> i want to ask you something. you are correct. the mainstream media is the most but i believe liberal. i think wayne lapierre and the extremist wing of the nra i think they've figuratively shot themselves in the foot time and time again. can i ask you this, though? should we have any more pictures of the president of the united states with a gun in ahis hand? >> not with a skimpy one with that. >> it's not right. >> doesn't work. it's a small issue in the big debate, i cringed. come on, people. >> my mind went back to a bowling alley in pennsylvania. >> just stop. doesn't matter. >> wee! >> stop. it doesn't matter. >> it doesn't matter. >> but come on. when was that released? >> saturday. >> come opinion.
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>> the picture was taken in august. it wasn't posed for this. >> they didn't just throw a gun in his hand. >> i should take him hunting. >> i think he'd enjoy that. >> i think he would. >> that's what the president likes to do on his birthday. >> it's fine. if he did it back in august and it wasn't like -- >> now they want to know how many times he did it. >> doesn't matter. he doesn't have to do it at all. >> doesn't have to do it. the argument is strong t is about the future of our country and what we want our society to be, and that was a bad call. one proposal high on the president's wish list, universal background checks for every gun higher, even at gun shows, the topic of a super bowl ad that aired in the washington, d.c., market, the spot purchased by mayors against illegal guns, a group led by new york city mayor michael bloomberg.
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>> the nra won't support background checks. >> we think it's reasonable to provide mandatory instant criminal background checks for every sale at every gun show, no loopholes anywhere for anyone. >> america can do this, for us. please. >> i'm confused. i'm confused. >> lapierre actually argued for -- >> no it's lapierre. >> it means the pierre. >> lapierre. >> so that's great, let's take that one off the list, right? >> no, no, no, because yesterday he changed his mind. take a look. >> i'm confused. you're for a universal background check? >> universal but now that's what president obama is now putting forward and let me talk about that. it's a fraud to call it universal. it's never going to be
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universal. the criminals aren't going to comply with it. they could care less. you're not going to computerize -- you've already seen you're not going to computerize the mental health records. we ought to quit calling it right now a universal check. the real title ought to be the check on law-abiding people all over this country. >> i'm confused. again the arguments are so ridiculous. that's like saying we're not going to have tsa screening. >> it's actually like you're not going to have laws against murder. the argument that all laws, any law that a criminal will violate is a law that you should not pass san argument against all laws because there is no law there are not some criminals who violate. it's a ridiculous argument and what you see in the ad wayne lapierre not on point on everything, making illogical off-point counter arcmeguments.
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the ad is precisely about this, you were for this 10, 15 years ago for columbine and why not now? there is no response. >> no gunshow loopholes, wayne lapierre's own words, no loopholes. we have universal background checks. 91% of americans, republican party in washington, d.c., support this. 91% of americans, and the question is, mika, are they going to continue to be run off into the cliff by extremists that make up the hard right of their party that destroys their opportunities to win national elections? this is very simple. people are like oh, joe, he's a -- i still believe what i've always believed ideologically. i have always also believed in winning. maybe because i went to the university of alabama. we like to win. we believe in winning. we believe you don't get the ball and run it into the other guy's end zone. you try to win games. this republican party is chasing
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the most extreme element in their own party through the primary processes and that's why harry reid right now is running the senate. >> you saw the front page of the business section in "the new york times" yesterday there are people who want these assault weapons and selling off the shelves at twice the price. i was online looking at guns, it's unbelievable how they're marketed. people like them. people in america feel they need these multiple -- >> did you buy one? >> no, i was just trying to understand. i personally don't get it, but there is, it's not just an extreme fringe tiny bit of society. there are people out there who support that. >> i tell you what -- >> in our society. >> there aren't enough of those people out there that feel like they have to have an assault weapon to carry presidential elections. >> there's enough to make gun manufacturers a lot of money to make gun lobby powerful, to make people like --
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>> wayne lapierre, he talks about the industry, think about the money wayne lapi year ginning up fear in americans and lying saying if they take away the assault weapons and the maing scenes that hold 30, they're going to take away your ha handguns. he knows that's a lie. scalia in 2003 said you have the right to have handguns, shotguns and honey rifles, in 2008 to protect your families. it's a lie. >> that you're going to lose something you're entitled for, and nobody has a reasonable use for assault rifles and 30 round magazines. the people who want universal background checks and want more controls may be winning in the public opinion but it isn't obvious they're winning on capitol hill. i think we're going to get background checks. we may get the magazines. the assault weapons, does not look like that's happening. >> it's going to take a long
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time. the background check is a 50/50. magazines not a 50/50 yet it will take time, assault weapons down the road but you look at the poll, at some point some of these will become 80/20 issues. that's not going to happen this year, it might happen next. we're talking about extremists, right? >> straight. >> and trying to go out for these extremists that have cost the republicans control over the united states senate, that's kept harry reid in office there, and there seems to be a recognition by some that you can't let the most extreme elements run your party. >> let's see how the gun debate fits into the next story. group of republican donors is trying to fend off tea party challengers who say they are hurting the gop's chances of taking control of the senate. it's called the conservative victory party and it's backed by
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karl rove and the super pack american crossroads. their aim to institutionalize the buckley rule by supporting in primaries the most conservative candidate who can actually win a general election. the new effort is meant to be a counterweight to a more hardline conservative groups who spent big money on primary challengers to their liking. the organization is eyeing seats vacated by democratic senator tom harkin of iowa and republican senator saxby chambliss of georgia. i'm wondering, is the same well where you want to go to renew the republican party? >> talking about karl rove? >> yes. >> it seems to me it's a good question to ask. you go to karl rove, the guy that just had a taste in the last election. i know karl and like karl but he got pasted in the election and conservatives brought up he was part of the bush administration
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that i'll say it myself, others think destroyed the conservative movement by spending us into record debt. >> and you're seeing the immediate reaction among some parts of the conservative movement, parts of the tea party, more populous attacking the group saying he's like the karl rove and his allies are their bad record to run on and they're deviating from the principles of true conservatism and want to back sellouts. i think the main thing you're going to see over the course of the next cycle is a further deepening of the schism between the two pieces of the republican party. this is not a bring the party together development. >> when we come back, former senior adviser to the president, david axelrod joins the conversation and he won the pulitzer prize for "the looming tower" lawrence wright takes us inside his latest book about the inside workings of scientology. >> how exciting? >> here is bill karins with a
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check on the forecast. >> good morning, everyone. chicago is not the fun place to be. two to three inches of snow has fallen in the last six hours. the airports have delays and the roads, many accidents being reported. the white on this map shows you where it's snowing and it's moved through northern indiana, snowing in detroit and pretty soon cleveland to columbus to mansfield and eventually towards pittsburgh. at chicago o'hare hour and a half delays. chicago is the trouble spot and it's cold, too, windchills 14 in chicago. look at your friends in the north, frigid air from minneapolis, duluth a windchill of minus 25, one of the coldest spots in the country. as far as the rest of the nation it's looking great. what a february it's been. denver, nice day. l.a. is looking good, san francisco to phoenix, a little bit of rain showers from little rock down to dallas and shreveport, the southeast looks okay. as we look ahead towards tomorrow, more of the same, we
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get the clippers diving down with light snow from minneapolis to chicago. east coast tomorrow morning at this time there will be snow in areas like philly a new york and washington d.c., you're watching "morning joe" brewed by starbucks. it's not what you think. it's a phoenix with 4 wheels. it's a hawk with night vision goggles. it's marching to the beat of a different drum.
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and where beauty meets brains. it's big ideas with smaller footprints. and knowing there's always more in the world to see. it's the all-new lincoln mkz.
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a live shot of the white house, look at this beautiful day in washington.
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joining us now from chicago, senior adviser to president obama, director of the university of chicago's institute of politics, david axelrod. mark halperin, is here at the table. >> who do you think is better at skeet shooter? david or the president? >> david, are you a skeet shooter? >> he got asked a question, he answered it. i am not a skeet shooter. they asked him have you ever shot a gun. >> i just asked you a question, why are you so defensive. >> hold on -- >> i tell you what, though, i don't understand, they should have put the picture out earlier. i don't know why they waited five days to put that out because it just rekindled the whole story. >> how about not put it out? >> please don't put it out. >> you don't have to. when the white house is asked to give a picture from camp david the answer can be no, right? you guys have done that before, right? >> it can be but you know, this
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thing, you know washington. you guys, this thing was cascading and conspiracy theo theori theories, guys like joe snickering and you had to do something but i just think they should have shut it down earlier. that's all. >> i missed what he said. >> it gets off point. was alex in your ear, he was in my ear, too. >> did he insult me? >> he compared you to a snickers bar. >> he compared me to a snickers bar. >> i have no idea what that means. so the president's talking about gun control today. as i like to say, assault weapon control. what's going on? >> well, i think that you guys summed it up right i think in the last segment, joe. i think the background check is a 90% issue. it seems to me that has a good chance to or a chance to pass. >> right. >> i think the magazines is a 65% issue, that has a chance but less of a chance to pass and i
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think assault weapons is an uphill climb but there's absolutely no reason why they don't pass or can't pass the background check. i thought wayne lapierre made an articulate case for ten years ago and that case is even more valid today. >> that was impressive. >> we live in chicago, and one of the reasons we have such a huge problem in this city is that all around us are areas with weak laws and with very lax background checks, and a lot of illegal guns flow into this city so it is a critical issue to get these background checks and every law enforcement official will tell you that. >> you live in chicago. what's the difference between chicago and new york city? we obviously have guns coming in to new york from a lot of different areas. something's going on, though, in chicago. it's not going on in manhattan. >> i think there are several things, one is the one i just mentioned. in manhattan you're surrounded by new jersey and connecticut with very strong gun laws. you got new york state, very
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strong gun laws. we are surrounded by areas that don't have strong gun laws, and so there is more of an inflow of guns from straw buyers, of illegal guns in this city. that's number one. number two is, we have a gang problem here that is more pervasive than other cities. i always thought it was partly because of the nature of our city. we are a city of wards and parishes, we organize ourselves that way but there are many, many gangs in this city. i think there are 100,000 to 150,000 gang members here as opposed to 20,000 in new york which is a bigger city and most of the shootings that are taking place are gang cross-fires so the gang problem is central to this. so those are a couple of reasons for it but it's a fundamental problem that we need to attack, and we need attack it vigorously. it's heartbreaking to watch the news at night and see -- we've
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all seen newtown but people in chicago, we experience this on a regular basis. we lost a beautiful 15-year-old girl last week who performed at the inauguration who had everything to live for, who had all the promise in the world, simply standing there, got caught in the gang cross-fire and lost her life. that is completely unacceptable. it's outrageous and we've got to do something about it. >> david, do you have a theory about why it is? it begs the question. the second thing you said is true, the gang problem in chicago is dramatically more severe than the gang problem in new york city or a lot of other big cities. what's the difference there? why is it the gangs flourish in chicago but don't flourish in new york? >> well i mean again i delved into a lot of the sociology of it. one of the things is that we organize ourselves by wards and parishes here in a way that's much more pronounced than other places, and so it lends itself
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to that kind of organization. beyond that, i don't know. i think it's something that is obviously central to solving this problem. one of the things that happened is, there was an effort to put away the leaders of the gangs and they put away some of these older gang leaders and then younger gang leaders came into play, and that actually exacerbated the problem because they had less control and less, i guess experience is what you'd call. so that's not to say we shouldn't go after them. we should go after them. federal government ought to go after them as well. the other problem we should talk about is, joe you talk a lot about the fiscal problems of the country, but they have really rolled downhill to local governments and so the ability to highered aquad numbers of police has been limited, and you
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know, this is at the end of the day, there are a lot of elements to this problem but part of it is a policing problem and you need adequate manpower in these very, very volatile neighborhoods. >> again, though, you have new york city, which obviously faces many of the same challenges fiscally, we deal with it as a nation, we're all in the same country. it seems to me we've got to do a better job at figuring out the differences between chicago, new york, and again the reason i keep bringing that up, john hyleman or mark halperin, new york city has had a record low number of murders this past year, at the same time chicago has had record highs. there has to be something chicago can learn from mayor bloomberg. >> one of the things they're learning, hard to implement is more cops walking the beat. more cops like they do in new york, community policing, cops
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on the ground in the same place, trying to get inside and stay with the sociology in local areas. david i want to switch to deficit reduction and macro economics for what seems like years because it has been. i've been telling joe the president is going to get serious about entitlement reform as deficit reduction. >> he's been telling me that for five years. >> is 2013 the year to do it and how serious will he be about medicare, medicaid, social security, other entitlements that need to be controlled. >> i don't remember mitt romney running around the country last year attacking the. the for cutting medicare. the truth is when he started down the road on health reform one of the major motivations was to bend the cost curve on health care because of this inexorable rise in cost to the government as a result of medicare, so he's
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committed to doing that and said he'll move forward on that and been willing to negotiate on a number to move forward and it's pretty obvious to me that the ultimate solution to this fiscal jam we're in is both entitlement reform and tax reform. tax reform that produces revenue and that is the reasonable center solution to all of this. now, when you talk about entitlement reform, however, the measure shouldn't be how much pain do you inflict on people, how much do you take away from hard working people across this country. people are going to have to make some sacrifices, but the goal should be to strengthen those programs so they're there for americans when they retire. >> yes. >> and not to dismantle those programs. >> i'm with you, david. >> can i ask you a question on taxes? we were talking earlier about closing loopholes, deductions, et cetera, some are politically contentious, things like the mortgage interest deduction.
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do you think that can actually happen? that's where the big fish are. >> well, yes. on individual tax reform that's true. i think you can means test it as it were and hit folks at the higher end on some reductions. there's corporate tax reforms that can be done and plenty of loopholes as famously brooded about a 10,000-page tax code, many of those provisions put in by lobbyists for various corporations and industries. many of them don't advantage the economy or the country, and we ought to examine all of those things as part of solving this problem. >> okay, david axelrod, always good to see you. i still can't get used to the lip. >> i think it looks cool. he looks incredible. >> not coming back. get used to it. this is the way it's going to be. thank you. >> is it the chicago institute? >> he looks 15 years younger
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look at him. >> "three dog night" in pro time. >> exactly! >> see you guys. coming up, pulitzer prize winning author lawrence wright joins us for his new provocative and controversial book. [ female announcer ] when a woman wears a pad she can't always move the way she wants. now you can. with stayfree ultra thins. flexible layers move with your body while thermocontrol wicks moisture away. keep moving. stayfree. [ male announcer ] when it comes to the financial obstacles military families face, we understand. our financial advice is geared specifically to current and former military members and their families. [ laughs ] dad! dad! [ applause ] [ male announcer ] life brings obstacles.
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welcome back to "morning joe" 36 past the hour. joining us now staff writer for "the new yorker" and pulitzer prize winning author lawrence wright. he is out with a new book "going clear: scientology, hollywood and the prism of belief." a provocative book and title that has generated some pretty angry responses from the scientology committee. >> lawrence i understand when you were starting to write this book you were paid a visit by actually attorneys. >> well they came to "the new yorker" there were four attorneys and two spokespersons for the church of scientology. this was really my opportunity to talk to the church because they wouldn't talk to me but it was that delegation plus "new
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yorker" fact checkers and editors and our lawyer and we sat around the entire day from like 9:00 in the morning until 6:00 in the evening and it was one of the most gruelling, interesting days i ever had as a reporter but it was my one opportunity to get them to respond to our 971 fact-checking queries. >> how'd that go? >> it was actually, they brought 48 binders of material to support their allegations, and it was incredibly useful to me. i think they thought they were going to drown me in information, but pouring information on a reporter is like pouring information on a fish. >> let's back up, 200 interviews with current and former scientologists as well as other sources and what did you find overall? what is your takeaway in terms of scientology and some of the problems that you might feel exist? >> mika, there are three tiers
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of scientology, republic scientologists if you walk into a church you can walk away, and then there are celebrity scientologists and those are the people that you know, and it's not so easy for them because again and again, they've been asked in public to make declarations in support of the church, you give them a lot of money and they're wedded in the public mind to scientology and a third tier which is their clergy, that's called the sea org and inside that clergy there are a number of reports of abuse and involuntary confinement. i had 12 people tell me that the leader of the church, david muscavage had beaten them. >> the church says there is no record, no police reports, no medical reports, no photos, no documents, no evidence to
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support these allegations. why does nobody report this to the police? >> it's not unusual, as the way the catholic church handed pedophile priests. they tried to keep it inside the organization. they have a tremendous distrust of what they call wog justice, any knob-scientology police agencies. >> what is the prison of belief? >> what i found fascinate something, there is involuntary confinement. there are people that have been locked up in these reeducation camps for years on end, but to the great extent, it's not that they're being held against their will. the fbi was investigating this when i was investigating it, and i was talking to some of my sources about what the feds were telling them and the feds were planning to have a raid. they were going to go into the sea org compound, open up the doors of this thing called the hole, where executives have been held for years on end, and say, you're free, and the former
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scientologists said if you did that, they would tell you it's sunshine and sea shells, we're here for our own good. >> you talked about the celebrity scientologist. you started with paul hagus, the seeds fan with you reporting a piece about him. >> right. >> tell that story about how paul hagis turned from the church and became not an informant but the principal of character that led to you the journey. >> paul hag sis a two-time award winner, writer director and only one of the celebrity scientologists that ever publicly walked away, and the reason he did that was because of the anti-gay marriage proposition in california. paul has two gay daughters so when he found out they signed on
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that, he said you withdraw, you can't support that and the church refused to back away. at that point he began to investigate some of the allegationles of abuse, involuntary refinement, recru recruitment into the church at young ages and he was shocked, he didn't know these things about his own church so he publicly walked away. >> what does your reporting show is the motivation of the people at the senior levels of the church to engage in not attempts to keep people from learning more about the church but in the kind of abuse you are talking about, physical abuse and mental abuse, what's in it for them? >> you know, this is a church that's dominated by a single individual, and that's david miss sxwrn cavage. i talked to people closer to the
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upper level of scientology who achieved the very high offices just below david muskavag he and they described a total universe around this single individual. >> tom cruise, john travolta, they don't need scientology. tom cruise could come out tomorrow and say he's an atheist or become a southern baptist or catholic. nobody is going to lock tom cruise up and beat him up. first of all and so the first question is, tom cruise is pretty darned high up in the organization, so the first question is, do you think tom cruise knows of these alleged problems in scientology, and secondly, what's in it for a guy like tom cruise who has the freedom to do whatever he wants to do and chooses to stay in the church? >> this community? >> i'm glad you put your finger
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on tom cruise because i think he has a moral responsibility. he's been the front pitchman for this organization for years. more people have heard about scientology through him than any other person. there may be some willful blindness on his part but if so, it's time for him to open his eyes because he's been selling this and i think he's got -- how could the church of scientology change? the, surrendered to the church in 1993 after the chunk launched ,400 lawsuits into it and had private investigators following agents and so on and part of the deal when the church got its tax exemption is that they would drop all that. >> as a reporter have you asked the question and i'm certainly not, you know, doing tom cruise or scientology's bidding here but have you ever asked the question what's in it for tom cruise? there must be something good in it for guys like tom cruise and for a lot of the followers that
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become members of this church that fulfill them. >> absolutely. >> and by the way let me just say anybody who worked with tom cruise, said he's the most hardest working guy, polite guy, he will bend over backwards for anybody, a generous guy and when i left i was struck what everybody said behind him when he was gone what a wonderful man he was. what's in it for a guy like tom cruise. you studied scientology. what's in it for people? >> for a lot of people going in, for the first time in their life they might be addressing personal problems that scientology says you know if you go in, what is ruining your life? what is standing in the way of your economic spiritual, emotional progress? we can help you with that and they can, often-times, they have a menu of courses, you can take some auditing and cruise credits it with helping him with
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dyslexia, so i'm not arguing with that. i don't argue with the beliefs of scientology. it's the behavior, and some people especially tom cruise, these sea org members often children are working, they're getting paid $50 a week and they're doing favors for tom cruise, they built an airplane hangar, hand crafted a limousine for him, these are church members and so he's being treated very well. >> so just got a comment here from the church of scientology, i'll just read the key, just to give you a flavor of what they felt. error-filled, unsubstantiated bigoted anti-scientology book. >> but other than that -- >> good blush for the paperback. >> thank you, mark. >> what's your response to that? >> we have hey five fact checkers on it at "the new yorker" and hired two fact checkers when i was working on the book.
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we worked again with the church to get their responses. it was a very hostile, difficult negotiation. >> we've got it for you right here. >> we got to go but i'm curious, how difficult was it for to you write this book? >> must have been tough. >> i felt like the character, you know, in "hurt locker" who is disarming the bombs, you just don't want to cross the wires. it was a careful experience. >> the book is "go clear: scientology, hollywood and the prison of belief." you can read an exerpt on our blog, mojo.msnbc.com. lawrence wright, thank you. congratulations on this book. business before business with ryan sullivan is next. ♪ they see me rollin'
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hi, i just switched jobs, and i want to roll over my old 401(k) into a fidelity ira. man: okay, no problem. it's easy to get started; i can help you with the paperwork. um...this green line just appeared on my floor. yeah, that's fidelity helping you reach your financial goals. could you hold on a second? it's your money. roll over your old 401(k) into a fidelity ira and take control of your personal economy. this is going to be helpful. call or come in today. fidelity investments. turn here. welcome back. time for "business before the bell." lawrence wright has taken more considerable care on this book
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in scientologist than matt park and trey stone did in "south park." i read that article from paul hagis about scientology, really eye-opening stuff. wish i had something interesting about the markets. we were down. we came off amazing january, 12 times we've ended january up more than 5% on the s&p, 500 and the 11 previous times because we don't know what will happen this year we have ended the year higher as well. so if we do not end the year higher for the market this time, it will break a long cycle of history, the big news to watch today, possible buyout of dell, could be taken private by -- >> really? >> could happen $24 billion private equity deal, they'll borrow money to buy it. >> oh my gosh. >> heavy days are here again. >> brian, thank you so much. more "morning joe" in a moment. like her oven roasted chicken baked in a rich, creamy alfredo sauce.
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she calls them her new comfort bakes. marie callender's. it's time to savor.
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she calls them her new comfort bakes. how do you keep an older car running like new? you ask a ford customer. when they tell you that you need your oil changed you got to bring it in. if your tires need to be rotated, you have to get that done as well. jackie, tell me why somebody should bring they're car
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here to the ford dealership for service instead of any one of those other places out there. they are going to take care of my car because this is where it came from. price is right no problem, they make you feel like you're a family. get a synthetic blend oil change, tire rotation and much more, $29.95 after $10.00 rebate. if you take care of your car your car will take care of you.
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humans. even when we cross our t's and dot our i's, we still run into problems. namely, other humans. which is why at liberty mutual insurance, auto policies come with new car replacement and accident forgiveness if you qualify. see what else comes standard at libertymutual.com. liberty mutual insurance. responsibility. what's your policy? we asked total strangers to watch it for us. thank you so much. i appreciate it. i'll be right back. they didn't take a dime. how much in fees does your bank take to watch your money? if your bank takes more money than a stranger, you need an ally.
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ally bank. your money needs an ally. i just served my mother-in-law your chicken noodle soup but she loved it so much... i told her it was homemade. everyone tells a little white lie now and then. but now she wants my recipe [ clears his throat ] [ softly ] she's right behind me isn't she? [ male announcer ] progresso. you gotta taste this soup. in the middle of the night it can be frustrating. it's hard to turn off and go back to sleep. intermezzo is the first and only prescription sleep aid approved for use as needed in the middle of the night when you can't get back to sleep. it's an effective sleep medicine you don't take before bedtime. take it in bed only when you need it and have at least four hours left for sleep. do not take intermezzo if you have had an allergic reaction to drugs containing zolpidem, such as ambien. allergic reactions such as shortness of breath or swelling of your tongue or throat may occur and may be fatal. intermezzo should not be taken if you have taken another sleep medicine at bedtime or in the middle of the night or drank alcohol that day.
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do not drive or operate machinery until at least 4 hours after taking intermezzo and you're fully awake. driving, eating, or engaging in other activities while not fully awake without remembering the event the next day have been reported. abnormal behaviors may include aggressiveness, agitation, hallucinations, or confusion. alcohol or taking other medicines that make you sleepy may increase these risks. in depressed patients, worsening of depression, including risk of suicide, may occur. intermezzo, like most sleep medicines, has some risk of dependency. common side effects are headache, nausea, and fatigue. so if you suffer from middle-of-the-night insomnia, ask your doctor about intermezzo and return to sleep again. ♪